


say your prayer to the head of this bed

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Dubious Consent, F/M, Flogging, Hair bondage, Historical Hetalia, Impact Play, Mildly Dubious Consent, Punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 13:42:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Mexico and Spain have a discussion about her recent life choices in the middle of the Mexican War of Independence and the Peninsular War in Spain. Spain's office might never recover. Written for Season of Kink 2019, "Punishment/discipline."





	say your prayer to the head of this bed

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed warnings: angry, but mutually enthusiastic sex between a prisoner and (also occupied) jailer; a flogging and a lot of blood; general references to a consensual but extremely power-imbalanced relationship; negotiation probably happened but offscreen, a very long time ago
> 
> The timeline and political details here are deliberately hazy and loose; I wrote it for a porn challenge. Per usual, the speech of the characters is not the opinion of the author (and in this case not necessarily the opinion of the characters, either.)
> 
> Title from "Birth-Day" by Suzanne Vega.

"What did you think would happen?" Spain asked dryly. He hadn't looked up from his paperwork, so Ximena didn't have a good trajectory to spit in his face. She refused to think of him as Antonio - not here, not as a prisoner in Madrid.

She wished to see his face and not to with equal and opposite passion. She hadn't been in his bed since just after the war over his succession; hadn't seen him in person in decades. She wondered how French occupation was treating him. Apparently she was going to find out.

"Mexico will rise again," she snapped, shook off the human guards and walked into his office herself.

"Leave us," Spain said, and waited until the door clicked shut to say, "God in Heaven, Ximena, why did he retreat? You'd have had the capital eventually, they didn't have anywhere near a large enough defense."

She frowned. That was... not what she'd expected, not after being dragged all the way to Europe alongside the only rebel they hadn't executed. "Are you angry I rebelled, or that Hidalgo fucked it up?"

"I'm not angry," Spain said blithely. "Nothing you do matters. I'm professionally curious. What _did_ you think would happen?"

Jesus Christ, she'd forgotten how much she hated it when he patronized her. At the end of the decade she'd be three hundred. She wasn't a child. She also wasn't the naive adolescent who'd once believed he loved her and not just her precious metals. She could hardly believe she'd once taken the way she was treated as criollo - Mexican-born Spanish - with him around as a compliment instead of an insult.

Truthfully, the question of what would happen hadn't been much on Ximena's mind when she joined the thousands-strong crowd marching slowly to Mexico City. Nations were made of ideas and citizens with new and wild ones could make you as drunk as agave liquor, not that she felt like telling Spain that was why. "I thought Hidalgo was less of a spineless coward," she said instead. "Don't you have better people to talk to than lowly rebellious provinces? For example, France?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'd rather talk to you than France any day." Spain finally put down his quill and looked up. 

She rapidly looked away: meeting his eyes had a tendency to derail any conversation instantly. "Well, I'm certainly prettier," she remarked.

"More civilized, too."

"I'd take that better if I didn't have the feeling you meant it as an insult to France." Actually she was glad he'd said it: her rage had had too much time to die off crossing the ocean in chains with Abasolo. It was too easy to look at him and see Antonio, her lover with the gentle hands and wide laugh, face to face. She could more easily understand him to be the Spanish Empire from across the Atlantic Ocean.

Spain winced. All of his emotions were full body affairs in private, so she couldn't miss it even with her eyes determinedly on his heavy gold rings. "I apologize, cariña, I didn't mean it that way. We were discussing Hidalgo?"

"Jesus Maria, Spain, spare me the lecture and just have me flogged for rebellion. I'll take the pain over your sarcasm every day." She slouched as far as the borrowed corset they'd stuffed her into would let her. She'd happened to be wearing indigenous clothing on the street and they hadn't cared much when she was in the ship's brig, not until they were hauling her out and taking her not to prison, but to Spain. She had no idea whose clothing this was. Probably a servant's.

"I don't want to have you flogged," he said. "I want to know what the fucking hell you were thinking. You're usually more competent than this."

Well, _that_ stung, son of a bitch. "So, how is it sucking France's dick?" she asked instead of answering. "Got a new round of the clap yet?"

"I've never had the clap."

"You're definitely lying, I know you've fucked France and he gives everyone the goddamn clap."

"Ximena." She'd been trying to upset him half as much as he upset her without even trying, but he sounded more like he was trying not to laugh, the patronizing jackass. "I believe you're trying to make me angry."

"What gave it away?" She raised her eyes only reluctantly because she could never quite concentrate again after she - yeah, there, he had damn pretty eyes for a murdering bastard; violently green like the ocean got sometimes.

He pinned her with them - he was too aware of his looks, Spain was - and she swallowed as he got up. 

"I'm supposed to be punishing you right now," he said conversationally, throwing the bolt on the door and taking a book from the shelf on the wall. "Orders, you know." She tensed in anticipation, but he only folded the letter he'd been writing and put it inside the book, then replaced it on the shelf. The paper was now hidden, she presumed, from the human servants -- and not from her. (He was technically an occupied nation too these days, and wasn't that a funny thought?) 

"I was going to lecture you for the spot of idiocy with Hidalgo," he said, "And consider it done -- I know you hate listening to me talk much more than any amount of physical pain I could inflict--"

"That's the truth."

"--But if you'd _actually_ prefer I beat you I'm sure I can manage it." He sat back down at the desk and regarded her. She didn't like to look in his face. He had feelings for her too much like affection - whatever passed for love in Spain's head, when it was directed at those his people would always say were subhuman - and he showed them too readily. "Well? What will it be, querida?"

"Holy host, Antonio," And damn her for slipping and using his name, "Beat me, throw me in an oubliette, throw me to your _dogs_ , I don't care. Just shut up."  
"I'm afraid that last one isn't on the table," he said, voice thin with sarcasm. "Take your clothes off, then. Rosalia will want those back intact, I'm not taking anything to you through them."

She got up and stripped the gown off, forcing herself to take the time not to stress the fabric. "Whose are they, anyway?"

"The guard's eldest daughter's, I think." She abruptly stopped taking care, and he snorted when she ripped a button loose half on purpose. "You'll fix that before I give them back, they're very poor."

"They're French spies."

"But poor ones. And they're mine right now." She heard his chair scrape back again as she closed her eyes and focused on untying the corset behind her own back. "If I tell you to lean over the desk I know you'll take the opportunity to knock anything breakable off of it, so come here, the window ledge."

"The _window_?" Her face was hot. She took her shoes and stockings off even though they wouldn't be in the way, because Ximena could comfortably appear in court dress or naked in public or in a single layer of translucent cotton, but nothing made her feel exposed like wearing only Spanish-style undergarments. 

"Please, I've seen what you used to call a dress in Mexico, you have nothing the world hasn't seen straight through the fabric. It faces the courtyard, there won't be anyone there now anyway. Go."

She sighed, and she went. The sill was wide, and there were shutters, which were presently open. She braced her forearms and leaned over - not enough to make her uncomfortable, she judged - and noted that at least Spain had been telling the truth. The courtyard garden beds were alternately wild and dead with neglect, the fountain was dry and there was no one in it.

"Money a little tight?" she said, pulling her knee-length braid over her shoulder and out of the way.

"You could say I've been distracted," Spain said, and brought down what was _definitely a horse whip_ across her back.

She shrieked, to her embarrassment, although she'd maintain it was surprise. "You keep that thing in your desk drawer?" she snapped.

"Close at hand, but no," Spain said, so she supposed he just happened to have an oiled horsewhip in his possession so intimately he could call it to him from thin air, the fucking creep. "My apologies, I can use something else...?"

As though she'd give him the satisfaction. "Go on," she snapped, face burning, and dropped her head.

She braced herself in the window ledge and by the third blow she was drifting, pain continuing somewhere far away. It gave her a head rush, it always had - she'd actually started to forget the feeling in the modern world with its limited time for the sort of religious devotion she'd inherited from both sides. Only nuns bled for God these days, and she hadn't seen Antonio much in a century. Political chaos did that.

"Cariña." Distantly she realized the blows had stopped. He lifted her head by the hair. "Ximena?"

"Yes?" She blinked at him vaguely and wondered when her eyes had closed. She didn't resent the touch: her anger, too, had left her body behind.

"Call this a punishment, do you?" He was amused to not end. Irritation crept into her calm. "One would think you rebelled only to get my attention back. In the middle of a home war, too."

She twisted indignantly, but he slammed her back down into the sill before she could get anywhere with her assault. One of his hands caught hers, blunting the fingers she'd raked into claws. "Ah ah. I know what you're like when you're angry. If you go for my eyes they won't heal right now."

Breathlessly furious, she struggled and he caught her braid in his free hand. She felt it pulled up and taut and spluttered indignantly as he wrapped it around some portion of the casement.

"That's fragile, you know" she muttered, rage slacking off into something containable.

"You'll survive pulling some of it out. You could always stop struggling." He kicked her legs apart and laughed softly, making her flush again. She felt him brush against her, stooping, then he ran two fingers up her inner thigh, pulling her attention to a trickle of something not blood there. "If I wondered if you were really enjoying this... You're dripping, cariña."

"I hate you." She closed her eyes and leaned as far into her forearms as she could with her hair fastened tightly over her head.

"I doubt that," Antonio said. He touched his fingers to her labia lightly, making her jolt - and when had he taken off his gloves? - then straightened. "I'm afraid I am supposed to punish you, not merely ravish you. I'll just keep talking, this time, shall I?"

She bit her lip as the whip came down over her shoulders, making her gasp. She wouldn't scream, wouldn't struggle against it, but she couldn't relax into the pain when he kept jerking her into the moment with his damn mouth.

"--Very amusing, to hear your revolutionaries calling my dear king's name. Tell me, did you briefly develop a passion for King Ferdinand VII or was that always a ruse? I know how much you love my rule," he said, and snapped the tail of the whip over the side of her ass, teasing more than hurting her.

Ximena swore under her breath, swallowed and said flatly, "Yes. Please, take my silver, my women and my labor. I love being looted."

"Please, you've nothing to complain about, I _pay_ your miners. Talk to Peru."

"I try to avoid it," Ximena muttered and yet another, harder blow cracked over her back. She shuddered and leaned over. "Actually, you specifically banned me from trading with her, didn't you?"

Oh, god, it hurt when he relaxed enough - or was provoked enough, she never knew which - to really take his temper out on her. But it gave her - would give her, when she could think - satisfaction to know he'd really lost control. Her vision grayed out; she came to herself again ten or fifteen hard blows later, nearly doubled over, pulling against her hair. Her legs were wide for balance and her chest heaved with each breath. She felt blood trickling down her ribs beneath her breasts, pooling over her spine, and said, "I'm going to stain your carpet." Her voice cracked.

There was a pause. "You're already staining the walls," Antonio said. To her surprise, he was breathing hard, too. Occupied nation; of course.

"Untie me?" she mumbled. She felt lightheaded from the pain, wasn't sure how much longer she could stand, and this would be a terrible position to faint from.

"One moment." He held her up by the hair at the nape of her neck as he unwound the rest. "Querida? Next time, pick a more competent rebel."

Furious again, she surged, trying to throw him off her back. He laughed; she felt her hair fall loose, sticking to the blood on her skin. The next moment he was inside her from behind; she groaned, trying to remember him undressing, as he clasped her to him hard. "Oh, no," he said. "You have to _win_ first to tell me no, remember?"

"If I didn't know better I'd say you wanted me to." She hated the way she shifted automatically to make it easy for him, the way her body still knew his. The jewel - and most of the tax revenue - of the Spanish Empire indeed. "Why in the name of God did France trust you to imprison me when I rebelled against his rule?"

"We both know if I lose you now I'll never get you back." He bit into her shoulder, bruising her flesh with the way he ground his teeth and making her cry out, before he said, "He thinks I want to keep you in the long term more... and I think he was hoping you'd distract me."

"Possibly smarter than I--" His hand closed on her breast, nails raking her- " _Thought_. Then."

"Mm..." He licked at her shoulder, teeth scraping her incidentally this time, and she knew he was tasting her blood like a war dog. The thought made her shiver in fear and the fear pushed her over the edge, head down and eyes shut tight. She at least stopped herself crying his name.

After he finished in her, he pressed his lips to her hair and said, "If you fuck up again I'm beating you in front of France next time."

**Author's Note:**

> Liked this? Consider [reblogging it on tumblr](https://basketofnovas.tumblr.com/post/185877665940/say-your-prayer-to-the-head-of-this-bed).


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